Wow that is seriously borked. I think in order for it to perform that badly it has to be throttling at some ridiculously low temperature. Like maybe 60C. Is your cpu fan working at all? Is the cooling system free of dust? You posted a temperature of 38C but I am wondering is that as high as it goes, even when running superpi?

And to anyone: is there a way to tell what temperature it is throttling at?

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And to anyone: is there a way to tell what temperature it is throttling at?

RMclock can show you, via the graphs, at what temp it throttles, but that is for the CPU's internal throttling (I think). So if the BIOS is doing some sort of throttling, too, it may not detect that. I don't really know.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff7

Set an otherwise adequately-intelligent person in front of a computer and some act like every incorrect mouse click will cause a child to be dumped into an industrial blender.

I can tell you exactly what this problem is. Do a Google search for "Dell" and "Throttlegate" and you'll be inundated with information from loads of pissed off people.

When first released, the E6400/E6500 (as well as various XPS and Studio models) were notorious for suffering from overheating problems. Dell, instead of fixing the problem, spent lots of time ignoring customers and deleting threads about the issue in their support forums in a futile attempt to make the issue "go away". Some Dell engineers eventually created a BIOS to solve the heat problem. It used a combination of reduced CPU multipliers and Intel's CPU Clock Modulation feature to reduce laptop temperatures. It also had the unfortunate side effect of being so over-sensitive to overheating that it reduced laptop performance down to approximately that of a brick with an LCD attached.

Apparently, you have that BIOS installed in your machine and something happened (probably an overheat) that triggered it.

The first step to fixing it is to update to the most recent BIOS which is available -- Dell allegedly released a BIOS that was supposed to resolve the issue.

If a BIOS update doesn't fix the problem, there is a utility in the following thread you can use to get around it. However, you have to be very careful with it. It works by maximizing the CPU multipliers and disabling CPU clock modulation. When using it, you have to monitor CPU temperatures because the utility will have the side effect of overriding the thermal protection on the laptop (meaning, you can literally burn up your CPU). It also has the side effect of severely reducing battery life when on battery, so don't enable it unless you are doing something beyond web browsing that needs the higher performance levels.

I still have this problem when watching youtube or other video clip on the internet.... suddenly the Core Speed goes from 2525MHz to 350MHz and the Multiplier from x9.5 to x1.5..... everything is slow until I quit the video I`m watching on the internet.... Why?

Your problem is it's a Dell, a very old Dell! Old Dells really suck and are notoriously slow.

Sorry, I beg to disagree with yr broad brush dissing. I am right now on a still pretty amazing Optiplex GX620 (Presler, PD 3.40) (got it used on eBay, upgraded it) and few can believe how fast it still is.

I still have this problem when watching youtube or other video clip on the internet.... suddenly the Core Speed goes from 2525MHz to 350MHz and the Multiplier from x9.5 to x1.5..... everything is slow until I quit the video I`m watching on the internet.... Why?

I wonder if it's overheating. Do the fans spin up? Have you looked at CPU temps when this occurs?